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Alexandra K. Wettlaufer is a Professor of French and Comparative Literature, specializing in 19th-century literature, visual arts, culture, and gender studies. A recipient of a 2014-15 Guggenheim Fellowship, Professor Wettlaufer is currently working on a book project entitled "Reading George: Sand, Eliot and the Novel in France and Britain, 1830-1900." She is the author of three previous books: Pen vs Paintbrush: Girodet, Balzac and the Myth of Pygmalion in Post-Revolutionary France (2001), In the Mind's Eye: The Visual Impulse in Diderot, Baudelaire and Ruskin (2003), and Portraits of the Artist as a Young Woman: Painting and the Novel in France and Britain, 1800-1860 (2011). She has published numerous articles on Balzac, Sand, Baudelaire, Zola, Manet, Ruskin, Turner, Berlioz, Grandville, and Flora Tristan; her article "She is Me: Tristan, Gauguin, and the Dialectics of Colonial Identity" (Romanic Review,2007) was awarded the Nineteenth-Century Studies Association Essay Prize, Honorable Mention. Professor Wettlaufer has received fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, ACLS, Bourse Marandon, the Clark Art Institute, and the National Humanities Center. Her teaching awards include a President's Associates' Teaching Award, the Blunk Memorial Professorship in Teaching and Advising, a Raymond Dickson Centennial Endowed Teaching Award, a Liberal Arts Council Teaching Award, and University Coop Award for Undergraduate Thesis Advising. She is the Co-Editor of Nineteenth-Century Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal and serveson the Editorial Boards of European Romantic Review, Nineteenth-Century Studies, George Sand Studies, and Dix-Neuf.Professor Wettlaufer has also served on the Advisory Boards of the American Comparative Literature Association, Nineteenth-Century French Studies Association, Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Association, and on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association. Professor Wettlaufer is a core faculty member of Comparative Literature, Women's and Gender Studies, and European Studies. She is the Associate Director of the Plan II Honors Program.

CTI 345 • Fictions Of The Self/Other

This course focuses on representative works from 19th- and 20th-century French fiction, from Balzac’s Realism to the present. We consider literature in its relation to history, culture, and society, with special attention to both form and style in the development of the novel, poetry, and theatre. The class includes a visit to the Blanton Museum and a session at the HRC examining rare books and manuscripts by the authors we are studying.

In this course we will investigate the performance of identity and gender in a wide variety of texts, from Romanticism, to Art for Art’s Sake, Realism, Naturalism, and Decadence. Works will be read in the historical and cultural context of the many social and political upheavals of nineteenth-century France, and we will examine these texts through the filters of nineteenth- and twentieth-century theories of self/other, gender, nation, race, and class.

Grading:

Participation: 20%

In-Class Presentation

& 5 page paper: 30%

Final Paper: 50%

C L 381 • Metropolitan Vision/Modernity

In “Metropolitan Visions: Seeing, Subjectivity and Modernity” we will consider representations of subjectivity and the urban landscape of Paris in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French novels, poetry, painting, and film, with a focus on the changing politics and poetics of vision, place, space, and the scopic regimes of power from 1830 to 2000. In units centering on “Panoramic Paris,” “Haussmann’s Paris,” “Modern Paris,” “Occupied Paris,” and “Diasporic Paris,” we will read works by Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola, Apollinaire, Aragon, Duras, Modiano, Sebbar, and Pineau, among others. As we trace the ways in which Paris is depicted in Realist, Naturalist, Symbolist, Surrealist, Post-Modern, and Post-Colonial texts, we will at the same time considering visual representations of the city in painting, drawing, caricature, physiologies, maps, illustrations, photography, and film. Theories of gender, mobility, migration, and subjectivity will be central to our discussions as we investigate the concrete and symbolic ways in which the city figures forth social constructions of French identity in these various genres and periods.

FR 390M • Revolutions In Gender & Genre

FR 390M

REVOLUTIONS IN GENDER AND GENRE

IN 19th-CENTURY FRANCE

Chateaubriand, Atala

Staël, Corinne

Hugo, Hernani

Balzac, Le Père Goriot

Sand, Indiana

Baudelaire, Le Spleen de Paris

Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Zola, Nana

Huysmans, A rebours

Course packet of critical texts

In this course we will consider representative texts from the major nineteenth-century movements—Romanticism, Realism, Idealism, Naturalism and Decadence—in terms of their revolutionary form and content, with special attention to the ways in which each of these authors addresses the questions of self and other in society. We will read novels, a play, and prose poetry, as well as critical texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Grading:

Participation: 20%

In-class presentation: 20%

Short paper (5-7 pp): 20%

Final paper (20 pp): 40%

C L 323 • Fictions Of The Self And Other

In this course we will examine representative works from 19th and 20th-century French literature, from Balzac’s Realism of the 1830s to Duras’s post-modern novel of the 1980s. We will consider literature in its relation to history, with special attention both to form and style in the development of narrative, prose poetry and avant-garde theatre. All students will be expected to give one in-class presentation on an aspect of French culture and history related to one of the works we are reading, and this presentation will be turned into a brief (5-7 page) paper. A final paper on a French novel from this period not included on the syllabus will be due the last day of class.

In this course we will consider the questions of gender, genre, space, and place in nineteenth-century France. In our readings of texts from the Romantic movement through Realism, Naturalism, and Decadence, we will focus on the various ways male and female authors use the ideas of nation, home, city, country, center, and periphery to delineate identities and the ways in which these places and spaces become gendered. Moreover, we will consider ideas of travel, mobility, circulation, geography, mapping, the exotic/erotic, home, and “away” an in each of these works, both through nineteenth-century critical texts (including excerpts from Staël’s De l’Allemagne, Baudelaire’s Le Peintre de la vie moderne, Zola’s Le Roman expérimental, etc) as well as readings from contemporary critics such as Foucault, Bourdieu, Bachelard, Benjamin, Terdiman, and Bhabha.

Course Requirements and Grading:

Class Participation: 20%

In-class presentation: 20%

Short paper: 20%

Final paper: 40%

C L 323 • Fictions Of The Self And Other

Description : In this course we will examine representative works from 19th and 20th-century French literature, from Balzac’s Realism of the 1830s to Duras’s post-modern novel of the 1980s. We will consider literature in its relation to history, with special attention both to form and style in the development of narrative, prose poetry and avant-garde theatre. All students will be expected to give one in-class presentation on an aspect of French culture and history related to one of the works we are reading, and this presentation will be turned into a brief (5-7 page) paper. A final paper on a French novel from this period not included on the syllabus will be due the last day of class.

C L 386 • Women In French Fiction & Film

In this course we will consider eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels about women and their twentieth-century interpretations as films. Focusing on questions of gender, representation, genre, translation, and narrative form, we will examine these various texts through a variety of critical filters, including history (social, political, literary, filmic), contemporary documents (i.e., Diderot’s essay on “La Femme,” transcripts of the Madame Bovary obscenity trial, etc), and critical theory from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Reading knowledge of French is required; discussions will be held in English. May be cross listed with WGS as well.

In this course we will examine representative works from 19th and 20th-century French literature, from Balzac’s Realism of the 1830s to Duras’s post-modern novel of the 1980s. We will consider literature in its relation to history, with special attention both to form and style in the development of narrative, prose poetry and avant-garde theatre. All students will be expected to give one in-class presentation on an aspect of French culture and history related to one of the works we are reading, and this presentation will be turned into a brief (5-7 page) paper. A final paper on a French novel from this period not included on the syllabus will be due the last day of class.

T C 603B • Compos And Read In World Lit

43545 • Spring 2010
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM CRD 007B

Goethe, The Sorrows of Young WertherMary Shelley, FrankensteinHonoré de Balzac, Old GoriotKate Chopin, The AwakeningVirginia Woolf, To the LighthouseCamara Laye, The Dark ChildGabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death ForetoldSalman Rushdie, Midnight’s ChildrenMarjane Satrapi, Persepolis

Syllabus

1/19: Introduction

Romanticism

1/21: Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther

1/26: The Sorrows of Young Werther

1/28: Shelley, Frankenstein

2/2: Shelley, Frankenstein

2/4: Shelley, Frankenstein

2/9: Filmic Frankensteins: Condon’s Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein

This course will be conducted as a seminar; therefore students will be expected to attend every class fully prepared to participate in discussion of the texts. For each class meeting, students are required to post at least one question or comment on that day’s reading assignment on Blackboard no later than 10 am. Class participation, including Blackboard postings, will count for 20% of the final grade. Each student will take part in a group presentation [no more than 10 minutes] providing historical/cultural background for one of the novels we are presenting. The group will then lead discussion during the following class, linking some of what they have presented to the readings. A grade, assigned to the group, will count for 20% of the final course grade. Three short papers will be due during the course of the semester, one of which will be peer edited. The grades for the papers and the peer editing will total 40% of the final grade. A final paper, due during exam period, will be worth 20% of the course grade. Late work will not be accepted.

The writing assignments will be divided into four different kinds of papers: thematic analysis; textual analysis; stylistic analysis/pastiche; and comparative analysis.

1. Thematic analysis: The first paper, due 18 February, will be a 3-4 page thematic analysis in which you will trace the ways a certain theme is developed in one of the Romantic novels and what purpose that theme serves in the larger scheme of the book as a whole.

2. Textual analysis: The second paper, due 23 March, will be a 4-5 page textual analysis/close reading of a passage or scene from one of the Realist or Naturalist texts. [You may not choose a passage we have worked on in class.] Here you will focus on the ways in which the author structures a scene and uses language, tropes, metaphors, description, etc. to create a certain effect or meaning, and how that reflects larger themes of the novel. This paper will be peer edited. We will discuss techniques of peer editing in class. Both the first draft with peer edits and the final draft will be submitted. Each student will receive a grade for editing and for his/her own paper.

3. Stylistic analysis or pastiche: The third paper, due 15 April, will be 5-6 pages focusing on one of the author’s style. Students may choose here to write an analytic paper or a stylistic pastiche, in which they narrate a fictitious episode in the style of one of the authors we have read. This creative exercise is harder than it appears and demands an intimate knowledge of the way an author writes. It is also, however, a great way to understand the way style ‘works.’

4. Comparative analysis: The final paper will be due 10 May and will be an 8 page paper contrasting aspects of two of the novels we have read. Here you will develop your argument using analysis of themes, passages and style, building from the techniques you have used in your previous papers. Approval for your final paper topic must be obtained no later than 1 May.

The first three papers may be rewritten once; rewrites are due within a week after the papers have been returned. No late work will be accepted. Please follow the MLA Handbook for your style sheet. You are strongly encouraged to use the resources of the Undergraduate Writing Center in FAC 211. They can help you with drafts, editing and rewrites.

FR 326L • Intro Fr Lit II: Fr Rev-Pres

33860 • Spring 2005
Meets TTH 12:30PM-2:00PM BEN 1.108

Publications

Wettlaufer, AK (2011) Portraits of the Artist as a Young Woman: Painting and the Novel in France and Britain, 1800-1860 (Columbus: Ohio University Press).

Wettlaufer, A.K. (2010) Artistic Self-Fashioning and Female Community: Travel Narratives and the Construction of Female Artistic Identity in the Nineteenth Century. In T. Mangum (Ed.), A Cultural History of Women in the Age of Empire. Oxford: Berg.